Richard Branson says he'll send people into space by Christmas

Billionaire Richard Brandon really wants you to believe he's sending people into space – and soon. In a recent interview with CNN, the founder of the Virgin Group says he is "reasonably confident" that his space company can beat competitors like Blue Origin and SpaceX with crew travel into space before Christmas.

Points to Branson's long-held plans to send humans into space – and especially the gap between 2007, when Branson originally said that Virgin Galactic would send humans into space, and now – Rachel Crane of CNN asked how much Branson "Critics [his] wanted to prove"

"Space is difficult." Rocket science is rocket science.That has taken 14 years, Jeff Bezos 14 years. "Branson said, referring to the private space company Blue Origin of Amazon, the next Year tickets for suborbital flights wants to sell.

As Crane noted, Virgin Galactic has promising very promising that the company is about to bring people into space to fail. And that was even before the company's ambitious plans were derailed by the test crash of the VSS Enterprise in 2014, which killed a pilot and injured a copilot. It is noteworthy that Virgin Galactic resumed crew testing with their new SpaceShipTwo aircraft this year. Nevertheless, Branson said he was "pretty sure we were going to be [send people to space] before Christmas."

According to CNN, test pilots will be the first to fly into space with Virgin Galactic, although Branson plans the trip itself as the first passenger. (His children are likely to follow as one of the first passengers to fly into space with Virgin Galactic, he said.) But Branson told CNN that he had "not allowed it" until the [test pilots] first broken it a couple of times Has. According to CNN:

SpaceShipTwo, the Galactic rocket plane, will fly into space after it has dislodged itself under the wing of a mothership, and has been thoroughly tested on the ground and at lower elevations, Branson said Space will, however, be "the most dangerous."

The pilots will fly the spacecraft at sic 2,300 miles per hour and accelerate to top speed in about eight seconds.

If Virgin Galactic is actually in the In a position to meet a currently exceptional deadline, CNN noted that it will beat the space ambitions of both Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX, the latter of which is currently preparing for an unpiloted January SpaceX Crew Dragon test flight a targeted missions mission in June.

While Branson stated that security when sending people into space above First priority, he added, "Virgin Galactic will be the first." [19659003] We'll see.